The present invention relates generally to an aircraft wing with a modifiable airfoil, and more particularly to an aircraft wing utilizing expandable spars to modify the airfoil.
Current aircraft designs utilize a variety of airfoils on wings, horizontal stabilizers, conards, rotor blades, vertical stabilizers, and a variety of other elements. These elements largely consist primarily of relatively fixed airfoil surfaces. Thus, flying surfaces must commonly be optimized for specific applications such as low speed handling or improved high-speed aerodynamics. Aircraft that must operate in several performance environments must often adopt airfoil surfaces that provide suitable characteristics in multiple environments rather that optimized airfoils for particular flight situations. Such compromised airfoil surfaces may diminish the overall performance of the aircraft as well as diminishing its performance in specific flight conditions.
Current designs often limit modification of the flying surface to that which can be achieved using minimal mechanical moving surfaces. Mechanical actuators and mechanical moving parts are utilized to effectuate minor changes in the airfoil surface to allow for enhanced low-speed flight and limited autopilot maneuvering. Military aircraft have utilized mechanically swept wings for improved aerodynamics during high speed flight. These mechanical surface systems, however, often only provide a very limited ability to affect the airfoil shape and aerodynamic flight characteristics of the aircraft. These limited changes can result in the airfoil being optimized for only a limited range of the flight envelope.
An improved approach would be to optimize the configuration of the airfoil throughout the flight envelope of the aircraft. This would allow the airfoil to be modified for an optimized configuration over most of the flight conditions of the aircraft. An optimized airfoil could support greater weights at lower speeds to allow greater take-off weight while providing lower drag and better lift characteristics at high speed to achieve a greater range. Thus an airfoil capable of optimization throughout the flight envelope could provide significant improvements to aircraft performance. Such a modifiable airfoil would require greater control over the airfoil shape than provided by known limited mechanical surface designs. It would therefore be highly desirable to have an aircraft wing with a modifiable airfoil capable of greater optimization throughout the flight envelope than provided by previous methodologies.
It is, therefore, an object of the present invention to provide an airfoil with a configuration that can be optimized throughout the flight envelope of an aircraft. It is a further object of the present invention to provide an aircraft wing with a modifiable airfoil capable of being optimized throughout the flight envelope.
In accordance with the objects of the present invention, a geometric morphing wing is provided. The geometric morphing wing includes a rigid internal core. An expandable spar surrounds the rigid internal core and is comprised of a plurality of elastomeric bladders. An external fiber mesh overlay covers the plurality of elastomeric bladders to provide a smooth wing surface. The plurality of elastomeric bladders are expandable through the introduction of increased air pressure such that the profile of the geometric morphing wing can be modified.